Reviews by cmhess98

The funk DNA is real and that turns out to be the deciding factor. Daft Punk's debut arrives as a French house record built on Chicago house, disco, and groove music history filtered through a vocoder and a very specific Parisian sensibility — and underneath the electronic construction the bass lines are doing genuine work, the grooves are genuinely cool, and the whole thing has enough connection to the tradition it's drawing from to earn real respect from a listener whose standards in that department are not low.
"Around the World" and "Da Funk" are the landmarks — repetitive in the way that good groove music is always repetitive, which is to say purposefully and hypnotically rather than lazily. The programmed drums that have kept most electronic records at three in this project create less distance here because the funk foundation underneath them is doing enough work to compensate.
Not totally my thing is the honest qualifier, and it stays honest throughout — this isn't a record that connects the way soul and jazz do, and the change-of-pace framing is accurate rather than a limitation. But a record you'd throw on the player specifically for the groove and the energy it brings to a room has earned its four, and Homework earns it on exactly those terms.
A four for the grooves, the fun, and a record player test that didn't require much deliberation.

A step above the recent run of abrasive guitar records that ended in twos — Kristin Hersh’s angular intensity and Tanya Donelly’s melodic counterweight give the record enough genuine variety to land above the “fuzz for fuzz’s sake” verdict that sank Mudhoney and the Velvet Underground. The jagged rhythms and Hersh’s slightly unhinged vocal delivery are doing real work rather than simply making noise.

The honest ceiling is that none of it generates any pull toward return visits. A record that’s better than the alternatives isn’t the same as a record worth reaching for, and this one sits comfortably in the respect-without-love tier that the three exists to capture. Tanya Donelly’s presence is the distinguishing factor — her melodic sensibility gives the record moments of relative warmth that Hersh alone probably wouldn’t have allowed.

A three delivered without ambiguity. Better than its neighbors in the recent listening run, not good enough to matter beyond that.

The first five tracks are a murderer's row — "And It Stoned Me," "Moondance," "Crazy Love," "Caravan," and "Into the Mystic" back to back, five different emotional registers, all working completely. That opening sequence alone makes the case for the five before the record has even reached its halfway point. When a studio album opens with that kind of sustained quality it's not luck; it's a musician operating at the absolute peak of his powers with a band fully committed to the same vision.
The synthesis is the achievement — jazz, soul, R&B, Celtic folk, and gospel flowing together with a naturalness that makes the combination feel inevitable rather than calculated. The horn arrangements are precise and warm, serving the songs rather than decorating them. The rhythm section swings in ways that connect directly to the Basie and Masekela listens — ensemble playing where every instrument finds exactly the right amount of space and stays there. The flute on the title track gives it a lightness that shouldn't work and is completely essential.
It's Too Late to Stop Now already earned a five in this project — the live record that caught this same voice and vision in a room with a band at full commitment. Moondance is the studio counterpart, tighter and more produced but drawing from the same well. Around 1970 Van Morrison was operating at a level that very few artists in any genre have matched before or since, and this record sits at the center of that run.
A five without qualms, delivered by the first five tracks and confirmed by everything that followed.

The Velvet Underground's most abrasive record arrives as a deliberate act of confrontation — louder, noisier, and less interested in conventional song structure than almost anything being made in 1968. The historical importance is genuine. The listening experience is punishment by design, and not everyone is required to enjoy punishment.
The title track is the accessible entry point — a structured pop song underneath the distortion, a straight amphetamine rush that shows what the band could do when they wanted to. Everything after it moves progressively further from that concession. "The Gift" is eight minutes of John Cale reading a short story in one stereo channel while the band plays in the other, which is either a fascinating experiment or exactly what it sounds like. "Lady Godiva's Operation" adds dual overlapping vocals to the strangeness. "Sister Ray" closes with seventeen minutes of noise that requires a specific kind of commitment this record never quite earns.
"Walk on the Wild Side," "Sweet Jane," and "Perfect Day" are great — but those belong to a different Lou Reed entirely, the accessible melodic version that this record has no interest in being. A two for the version that showed up here, honestly delivered.

The grunge phase was real and the lineage is audible — Mudhoney as the missing link between the Stooges and Nirvana makes complete historical sense, and there's a version of this listener who would have found the raw, fuzzed-out garage rock here genuinely thrilling. That version existed. The time has passed.
What remains is too much fuzz for fuzz's sake — distortion as the point rather than the vehicle, rawness that sounds unfinished rather than urgent. The organ that surfaces occasionally hints at something more interesting underneath, and the moments where the hooks find the distortion convincingly show what the band was capable of. Those moments aren't enough to carry the record past the general noise that surrounds them.
A two that respects the historical importance without being able to recommend the listen. Some records belong to a specific time in a listener's life, and this one's time has passed.

The first Stones album composed entirely of original Jagger/Richards songs — no covers, which was a statement in 1966 and marks the moment they stopped being a blues covers band and started becoming themselves. Brian Jones is still fully present, his multi-instrumental contributions giving the record a textural variety that later Stones records wouldn't have — sitar on "Paint It Black," dulcimer on "Lady Jane," whatever the moment required.
The peaks justify the four completely. "Paint It Black" is one of the great singles of the decade, the sitar giving it an Eastern darkness that nobody else was attempting in mainstream rock in 1966. "Under My Thumb" and "Lady Jane" cover completely different emotional territory and both work, which is the mark of songwriters finding their range rather than just their formula.
The honest limitation is that the album tracks around those peaks range from solid to vanilla — some of it the product of a band still figuring out original material after years of covers, some of it probably fresh in 1966 and since imitated into familiarity. The gap between the highs and the filler is more audible here than on the records that came after, which is the sound of a band becoming something rather than having fully arrived.
A four that the hits earn and the back half qualifies. The arrival was coming — this is the record just before it.

The best-selling album of all time arrives already carrying more cultural weight than any rating system can meaningfully process, which makes honest assessment both easier and harder simultaneously. Easier because the greatness is self-evident. Harder because separating what the record actually is from what it became requires a deliberate act of listening that most people stopped being capable of decades ago.
What it actually is: Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson operating at the absolute peak of their considerable powers, nine songs that collectively redefined what pop music could achieve commercially and artistically at the same moment. "Billie Jean" is the centerpiece — a bass line so instantly recognizable it exists outside the song now, attached to a vocal performance that Michael never surpassed. "Beat It" brings Eddie Van Halen in for a guitar solo that had no business being there and is completely essential. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" opens the whole thing with a lyrical complexity — the vegetable section, the Manu Dibango-lifted closing chant — that most listeners never stop to examine because the groove doesn't give them room to breathe.
"The Girl Is Mine" with Paul McCartney is pure schmaltz delivered by two of the most talented people in pop history, which makes it fascinating and slightly bewildering in equal measure. Loving it and being unable to fully defend it is the only honest response.
Off The Wall and Bad both earned fives in this project on pure musical terms. Thriller sits above the five — a record that transcends its own rating, which is the rarest thing there is.

One of the north stars of this entire musical life, finally arriving as an assigned listen — which turns out to change nothing. Some records are so completely yours that encountering them in a new context only confirms what you already knew.
The details are where this record lives. Levon Helm's drumming on "Rag Mama Rag" is chaotic in the specific way that only complete control can produce — playing that sounds like it's barely holding together while being exactly where it needs to be. The jaw harp on "Up on Cripple Creek" is one of those details that has no business working and is absolutely essential to the song. The organ screaming underneath it all — after everything this project has built toward in terms of keyboard understanding, hearing it now from the inside is a different experience than it would have been at the start.
"Look Out Cleveland" is underrated in a catalog where almost everything gets overshadowed by the obvious landmarks, which is its own kind of achievement. A record where the deep cuts are this good has earned something that most records never approach.
Every song earns a comment, which is the definition of a record with no filler, no transitional tracks, no moments where the band is resting between the good parts. Five musicians who had spent years playing together finding the exact moment where all of that time became something irreplaceable — and then making a record that sounds like it came from a century of American music and invented the next one simultaneously.

The record that answers the "weren't they just a live band" question definitively — tight, focused, beautifully arranged country-folk-rock songs that don't need a four-hour concert to make their point. American Beauty is the Dead at their most accessible and most enduring, a collection of songs that entered the Americana common language so completely that hearing the originals after years of covers feels like finally meeting the person everyone has been telling stories about.
"Friend of the Devil," "Sugar Magnolia," "Truckin'," and "Ripple" have been covered by everyone from Counting Crows to Old Crow Medicine Show, and the source material earns that canonization completely. Garcia and Hunter wrote songs that sound like they've always existed — the definition of great songwriting, or proof that they tapped into something genuinely archetypal, which might be the same thing.
The Americana DNA sits in the same lineage as the Flying Burrito Brothers five — warm, communal, acoustic instruments given room to breathe, harmonies that suit the Sunday morning quality of the whole record perfectly. Garcia's guitar serves the songs rather than showcasing himself, which is the Dead at their best regardless of format.
A four that the songs earn honestly. The Americana center of gravity has shifted enough that even a record this warm and this full of standards lands just short of five — which says more about where the listening energy currently lives than about what American Beauty actually is.

The reinvention record — U2 disappearing into Berlin after the Wall came down and emerging with something that deliberately dismantled everything that made The Joshua Tree a five. Where that record was wide open and emotionally transparent, Achtung Baby operates behind glass, Bono adopting personas and ironic distance rather than earnest confession, The Edge's guitar buried in effects and texture rather than ringing out across open American landscapes. The artistic risk is real and it paid off completely.
The songs make the case without needing the narrative. "One" is the centerpiece and one of the great U2 performances — deceptively simple, emotionally devastating, doing more with less than almost anything else in their catalog. "Mysterious Ways" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing" give the front half a propulsive energy that the more experimental production never obscures. "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" shows the emotional range the record is capable of when it drops the ironic armor for a moment.
What keeps it at four rather than five is exactly what makes it fascinating — the distance is real. Moved and impressed is the honest verdict, which is a genuine achievement and a half step short of the place Joshua Tree reached. That record had nothing to hide and hid nothing. This one is more sophisticated and slightly less irreplaceable for exactly that reason.
A strong four that earns the reinvention narrative completely. The artistic risk paid off; the emotional ceiling is the trade-off.

Let’s be honest about what this is and what it isn’t. It isn’t a record that rewards close listening, builds toward anything, or asks anything meaningful of the person hearing it. It is an expertly constructed delivery mechanism for pop hooks, produced by Max Martin at the height of his considerable powers, performed by a seventeen-year-old with enough charisma to make the whole enterprise feel inevitable rather than manufactured. Those are different achievements and both are real.

The title track is the argument — the opening piano riff is one of the most instantly recognizable moments in 90s pop, the chorus delivers exactly what it promises, and the whole thing is over before you can think too carefully about it, which is precisely the point. The album tracks around it are catchy in the same frictionless, hooks-first way that makes the whole thing go down easily without leaving much behind.

What makes this a three rather than a two is the guilty pleasure factor, which is a legitimate category that the project has earned the right to deploy honestly. Every kid of a certain age had a crush on Britney in 1999, and the nostalgia that comes with that isn’t nothing — it connects the music to something real even when the music itself isn’t reaching for anything beyond the next chorus. Pure pop fun delivered without apology is worth its three.

Nobody knows who SAULT are. The collective operates in complete anonymity, releases records with almost no promotion, and periodically withdraws them from streaming entirely — a radical act in an era that demands artists be constantly visible and accessible. The music is the entire statement, and on Untitled (Black Is) that statement is considerable.
Released in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's murder and the global protests of 2020, the record carries that weight without being crushed by it. The grief and anger sit just underneath the surface of even the most groove-forward tracks — Black British soul and funk drawing from gospel, R&B, and Afrobeat in ways that feel organic rather than assembled. The Khruangbin comparison the record immediately invites is accurate but incomplete — same quality of groove as atmosphere, music that creates a world rather than just a collection of songs, but rawer and more politically urgent than anything Khruangbin has attempted.
Michael Kiwanuka's appearance is the guest cameo that makes complete sense in retrospect — the same serious, purposeful soul music-making that earned KIWANUKA a five in this project finding its natural home here. The anonymity of SAULT and the visibility of Kiwanuka make for an interesting contrast; the music they make together sounds like neither is thinking about any of that.
A four that passes the record player test comfortably — music worth putting on and letting run, which in 2020 or any year since is exactly what it was designed to be.

Bookends is Simon & Garfunkel's most ambitious record and the one that pushes hardest against the ceiling the duo format consistently imposes. The first side functions as a genuine concept suite — the arc of life from youth to old age, bookended by a recurring theme that gives the whole thing a structural coherence their earlier records didn't attempt. "America" is the peak, a road trip song that expands what Simon was capable of as a writer into something genuinely cinematic, the kind of track that makes you understand why the solo fives were inevitable.
"Mrs. Robinson" arrives with all its Graduate cultural weight and earns it, and Roy Halee's production throughout gives the record a sonic richness that distinguishes it from the more straightforward folk recordings that preceded it. The first side in particular holds together as a unified statement that justifies the concept without feeling forced.
The second side is where the ambition loosens — tracks recorded separately from the main sessions that sit less comfortably against the first side's thematic arc. The ceiling is real and this is where it becomes audible.
A strong four that the first side earns and the second side honestly limits. The two Paul Simon solo fives in this project suggest the constraint was always the partnership rather than the songwriter, which Bookends confirms without quite transcending.

The first solo record after the Smiths dissolved answers the obvious question — what does Morrissey sound like without Johnny Marr — with a lush, orchestral sound courtesy of producer Stephen Street and guitarist Vini Reilly that suits the voice without quite replacing what the partnership provided. "Everyday Is Like Sunday" and "Suedehead" are genuinely good songs, the kind of melancholic melodrama that Morrissey does better than anyone and that makes the case for his solo career in the first two tracks.
Everything after is totally fine and entirely not the point. The persona is intact — the wit, the self-pity, the literary references, the camp melodrama — and if that persona is your thing this record delivers it consistently. If it isn't, no amount of orchestral arrangement changes the fundamental equation.
A respectful three, honestly and without apology. The Smiths got the same verdict for similar reasons, which suggests the ceiling was always the ceiling regardless of the collaborators around him.

One of rock's great might-have-been stories, finally told. Smile was conceived in 1966-67 as Wilson's attempt to make the greatest album ever made — a teenage symphony to God built from orchestral pop suites, staggering vocal arrangements, and studio experimentation that was genuinely ahead of its time. It was shelved, partly due to Wilson's deteriorating mental health and partly due to the weight of his own ambition, and became one of the most mythologized unreleased records in history. That it took until 2004 to arrive makes what it actually is even more remarkable.
The vocals are ridiculous in the best possible sense — harmonic architecture so complex and so precisely realized that it's genuinely difficult to understand how one person's brain conceived it, let alone executed it across four decades of struggle. Wilson's choral layering has no real peer in pop music, and hearing it reconstructed and completed with the full vision intact is the kind of experience that recalibrates what you think the form is capable of.
The early quibble about dynamics gets its answer in "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" — a genuine wall of noise that Wilson reportedly believed caused a studio fire during the original sessions, arriving as a direct and almost too-perfect response to any complaint about the suite's range. From "Song for Children" to that moment to "Good Vibrations" closing the whole thing with one of the greatest singles ever recorded — the emotional arc is real and it builds.
The vocals earned the five early. The dynamics confirmed it late. "Good Vibrations" as a closing statement is Wilson making an argument that was already won.

Chrissie Hynde is one of rock's most distinctive voices — cool, tough, romantic, completely her own in a way that neither the punk scene she emerged from nor the new wave she helped define quite accounts for. The reggae-inflected bass lines that surface throughout give the record a warmth and looseness that separates it from the more austere post-punk happening around it. These are real assets, and they deserved more consistent material to work with.
"Brass in Pocket" is the record's best argument for itself — a self-assertion song delivered with such complete confidence that disagreement feels beside the point. It earns everything it claims and then some, which is the mark of a song that knows exactly what it is. The problem is that it arrives as a highlight rather than a representative sample, which tells you something about what surrounds it.
The honest limitation is that the songs ramble in ways that undermine the strengths. Hynde's voice pulls you in and the reggae DNA keeps things interesting in flashes, but a record that should connect more than it does is delivering an accurate verdict on itself. That gap between what the ingredients promise and what the songs deliver is ultimately what keeps this at three despite the genuine pleasures along the way.
A three that feels slightly like an underachievement given the talent on display — which is its own kind of honest assessment.

The record that invented prog rock arrived in 1969 fully formed and completely confident, which is either inspiring or slightly exhausting depending on which track you're on. Robert Fripp's band had no real precedent — jazz complexity, classical structure, rock energy, and a darkness that the era's psychedelia was actively avoiding — and the ambition is audible in every bar. That ambition is also occasionally the problem.
"21st Century Schizoid Man" is the opening statement and the strongest argument for the record — Greg Lake's distorted vocal and Fripp's guitar creating something genuinely aggressive that still hits hard fifty-five years later. The title track closes the album as a complete contrast, gentle and medieval and orchestral, the Mellotron giving everything its distinctive lush-but-eerie texture. Between those poles the record moves through enough genuine ideas to earn its reputation without fully earning a four.
What keeps it there is Moonchild — twelve minutes of sparse improvisation that tests the patience of even devoted listeners and tips the balance decisively. A record that earns a four needs to justify its worst moments, and Moonchild is too much to ask forgiveness for. The three is honest rather than dismissive — this is cool and genuinely impressive and something worth hearing once. It just isn't something you'd inflict on a room of people who didn't specifically ask for it.
Respect without love, delivered cleanly.

Get Behind Me Satan is the White Stripes at their most deliberately eccentric, which is either an admirable refusal to repeat themselves or a band stretching beyond what the songs can support depending on which track you're on. Both things are true simultaneously, which is ultimately what keeps it at three.
The pivot away from guitar toward piano and marimba as primary instruments was a genuine artistic risk, and the moments where it pays off are real — "My Doorbell" has a loose, piano-driven groove that shows what the record could have been if the material was consistently this focused. "Blue Orchid" opens with a disorienting slide guitar riff that commits completely to its own strangeness. These are the peaks, and they're worth hearing.
Everything between them is where the stretching becomes audible. Jack White's blues obsession and Delta mythology are the consistent thread, but the eccentricity that feels like vision on the strong tracks starts to feel like self-indulgence on the weaker ones — the difference between an artist following their instincts somewhere interesting and an artist following their instincts somewhere only they can follow.
A three that respects the ambition without being able to recommend the execution consistently. The White Stripes were genuinely great; this particular record is merely interesting, which in their catalog is its own kind of disappointment.

Four guys from El Cerrito, California who had absolutely no geographic right to sound like this. The bayou atmosphere, the swamp rock groove, the Delta blues foundation — none of it came from lived experience of the Mississippi or Louisiana lowlands. It came from John Fogerty listening with the kind of obsessive depth that turns study into something indistinguishable from inheritance. CCR out-Southerned the South on sheer conviction, which is either the great American music story or the great American music mystery depending on how you look at it.

Green River is the peak of a run that produced three records in a single year — 1969, when Fogerty had more songs than the calendar could reasonably accommodate and the band was locked into a groove that made the whole enterprise feel effortless. That it’s the best of the three is remarkable. That it runs under thirty minutes and leaves nothing on the table is the mark of a band that knew exactly what it had and didn’t waste a second of it.

“Bad Moon Rising” is the radio staple that needs no introduction. “Lodi” is the quiet heartbreaker — a song about a musician stranded in a nowhere town that gets better and more honest every time you hear it, the kind of track that sneaks up on you while the obvious single is doing its work. The title track opens the record with a confidence that the rest of it simply sustains.

“Superstition” is the anchor and one of the great keyboard performances on record. The clavinet riff sounds like a funk banger until you actually try to understand what’s happening harmonically underneath it, at which point the sophistication becomes audible in a way that casual listening doesn’t reveal. That gap between surface accessibility and underlying complexity is Stevie’s signature throughout — music that sounds inevitable until you look closely and realize how much work is holding it together.

Not every track is “Superstition,” which is the honest limitation and also the only fair standard to hold anything to. What surrounds it is still excellent — harmonically and melodically complicated in ways that reward attention, emotionally generous in ways that don’t require it. “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” operates at a completely different register than the opener and earns its place with equal conviction, which is the mark of a record that knows exactly what it has and how to use it.

Top to bottom awesome, honestly delivered. The classic period deserved its reputation, and this is where it started.